


To You, From Failing Hands

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: Doctor Who, Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood
Genre: Crime, Gen, Implied Character Death, Redemption, Resurrection, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-17
Updated: 2010-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:43:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five people who will almost certainly never work for Torchwood, and one who almost certainly will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To You, From Failing Hands

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from John McCrae's poem [In Flanders Fields.](http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19464) The section heads come from the following poems:
> 
> 0.[Mother to Son,](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mother-to-son/) Langston Hughes  
> 1.[An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,](http://www.bartleby.com/148/3.html) W. B. Yeats  
> 2.[Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing,](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/helen-of-troy-does-countertop-dancing/) Margaret Atwood  
> 3.[Success Is Counted Sweetest](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/success-is-counted-sweetest/) by Emily Dickinson  
> 4.[Epitaphs of War: A Dead Statesman](http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Kipling/Epitaphs.htm) by Rudyard Kipling  
> 5.[A Caution to Everybody](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-caution-to-everybody/) by Ogden Nash  
> 6.[The Death of the Hired Man](http://www.bartleby.com/118/3.html) by Robert Frost
> 
> Hey, at least I didn't mention [Lullaby](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lullaby-3/) again. Oh, wait...

_0\. ain't no crystal stair_

Because after all the crying, and the shouting, and the worrying, and the invasions, and the arguments, and the Weevil attacks, and one semi-disastrous audience with the Queen...

Well. Everybody has to start somewhere.

_1\. this life, this death_

Andy and Lois said they had it well in hand, but Gwen was at the hospital for a prenatal exam anyway, so she thought she might as well check in on him. The nurses in the burn unit were helpful once she said she was with Torchwood. Surprisingly, she found him wide awake, and hunched over a little netbook with bulging eyes. He looked good, considering he'd been pulled half-alive from the Bay a few days earlier, and had been legally dead for far longer.

"Captain Harkness?" Gwen asked.

Jack Harkness—the real one, she had to keep reminding herself—looked up at her in something like awe. By way of greeting, he asked, "Did you know we have a Negro president?"

Gwen smiled and pulled the curtain. "I think I heard something about that, yeah. I'm Gwen Cooper, by the way—I work with Lois and Andy. May I come in?"

"Yeah. Yeah, she said...c'mon, take a seat, you shouldn't be standing in your condition." He tried to push a stool in her direction, but he wasn't in any condition for gallantry, either; his plane had been burning when it fell through the Rift, and it had hit the water hard enough to shatter bones. It was semi-miraculous he was even alive.

Gwen took the stool, but said gently, "I think you'd be surprised what I can do in my condition."

Harkness shook his head. "I don't think there's anything left to surprise me. Lois gave me this...thingy...Wikipedia?" He waved a hand at the netbook. "I keep reading, and I keep thinking, it's impossible. It's all impossible. This place is impossible."

"A lot changes in seventy years," Gwen said.

"Yeah." Harkness nodded, looking distant. "Yeah, no kidding."

There really wasn't any reason for her to be here, and she knew it, knew she should leave him be and stick to the carefully-negotiated terms of her own maternity leave, but she couldn't let the matter rest. "Just for my own curiosity, Captain Harkness, I'd like to ask you a few questions."

He reclined on the pillows and smiled darkly. "Harkness, John Charles, but you can call me Jack. Born April 19th, 1905 in Liberal, Kansas to Michael and Roberta Harkness. Group Captain attached to the 133rd squadron of the Royal Air Force, since my own army had issues with the flatness of my feet. Shot down over Cardiff on January 21, 1941, only apparently I fell through some kind of hole in time thingy? And it's now April 23rd, 2010. Did I leave anything out?"

"Just missed your birthday," Gwen pointed out.

Harkness reached up to scratch his chin. "Shame, too. I look pretty good for a hundred and five."

The next question was a hard one, and Gwen decided to ask her herself, and spare the others the trouble. "Is there anyone you'd like us to look for? Family members, maybe?"

"I had no family," he said quietly. "We lost my old man in the Great War, both my brothers died of the flu in '18, and my mom died of a broken heart in '34 after the farm got foreclosed on. Last I heard from my sister, she'd gone out to California and married some Mexican, but I somehow doubt she missed me when I was gone. And..."

"And?" Gwen prompted gently.

He shook his head. "There was a girl. But she was better off without me anyway."

Gwen remembered some of the things Jack—her Jack, the future Jack—once said, about promises being broken during wartime, and decided it was a secret that this Jack was welcome to keep. "All right. I'm sure Lois mentioned that Torchwood will be overseeing your medical treatment, and that will take some time, but if you're ready, we can start creating a new identity for you right away."

Harkness blinked at her. "A new identity?"

"Birth records, passport, employment history..." Gwen said. "So that when you're recovered, you can start a new life in this century."

For some reason that made him laugh. "Employment history. Right. What are you going to put on there, I was a stunt pilot in some kind of ancient-history air show?"

"We can work on getting you a pilot's license," Gwen said, because she remembered too well what had become of Diana. "Or, if you have any other qualifications..."

"I didn't finish the tenth grade," Harkness said. "I didn't finish the tenth grade in 1920. You call that a qualification for anything?"

"You'll have a long recovery period, Captain," Gwen pointed out. "Plenty of time to study up on any topic you like."

He sighed and looked at the ceiling. "Never was much of a bookworm."

Gwen levered herself upwards, feeling the baby kick at the movement. With legs like that, he'd better be a star footballer when he grew up. "I know it's a lot to think about all at once, Captain, so don't feel like you need an answer right away. Just know that whatever it is you want to do, Torchwood will help you, however we can."

He didn't speak for a while, and Gwen was prepared to waddle on home; but when Harkness did speak, it was quiet. "The only things I've ever been good at were fighting and flying. So I went looking for any war that would have me. Only somehow I lived long enough that somebody decided I should teach others how I did it, and I ended up responsible for a lot of lives that weren't my own, and...and it was a lot simpler when I was taking orders instead of giving them, you know?"

"Oh, yes," Gwen said, with feeling.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "So you're in charge of this Torchward place?"

"Torchwood," she corrected gently. "And yes, I am."

He seemed to be weighing his next words carefully, but when he finally spoke, Gwen found she couldn't say she was at all surprised. "You guys hiring?"

_2\. but i've a choice of how_

Christina had sort of assumed that part of being held for treason meant no visitors, so she was surprised when the guards lead her out of the cell and into a bland little room. It looked like an interrogation room, which made less sense, since she had assumed there was very little left to say. All the relevant facts had been captured live by the BBC.

Not long after she was secured to her chair, a small, dark-haired woman came into the room with a large bassinet. "Sorry about this," she said brightly as she maneuvered it through the door in front of her. "Bit of a mix-up with the sitter, and my husband's gone out for the night, it seemed a shame to call him back. My name's Gwen Cooper, by the way, and this is Evan." She grinned, revealing a gap in her front teeth. Her accent was Welsh.

"Lady Christina de Souza," Christina said slowly, while Gwen Cooper made herself comfortable. She was wearing a leather jacket that was slightly too loose and jeans that were slightly too tight; baby Evan must've been quite a recent addition. "Not to be rude, but I'm not entirely sure what you're doing here, Ms. Cooper."

"I'm here to talk to you, Lady Christina," she said. "I thought that would be rather obvious."

"I've already spoken to the police."

Gwen smiled again. "I'm not with the police."

"A journalist, then?" Christina guessed, though she couldn't imagine them letting any journalists in to see her.

Gwen pulled a folder out of the bassinet and started flipping through it. "Christina de Souza, the well-educated, well-connected, but rather poorly-capitalized lady of Everwick. Suspected of a dozen major thefts, including an original copy of Wycliffe's English Bible, King Athelstan's cup, and, most recently, the Crown Jewels."

"Attempted theft of the Crown Jewels," Christina corrected.

"Yes, well, perhaps if you hadn't attempted to steal them while Her Majesty was wearing them..." Gwen set the folder down and laced her fingers together. "These are the terms. You will have complete freedom of movement within the city of Cardiff, and four supervised trips a year to any location within Great Britain, excluding a one-kilometer radius of the International Gallery, as well as unlimited work-related travel with a chaperon. You will be in the office at nine every morning and work a minimum of forty hours a week, not that that's usually a problem. You will be compensated at the usual rates, with the usual sick leave and vacation policy, to the extent we have any. You will be subject to random electronic monitoring for the first year to ensure compliance with the terms and if you get so much as a parking ticket, they are instantly voided."

Christina could only blink for a minute, because surely she couldn't be hearing this. "Are you offering me a job?" she asked.

"I'm offering you a deal," Gwen said. "You work for me for five years, subject to the terms I've just laid out, and your criminal record will be wiped clean. If you violate the terms in any way, or even just piss me off, you'll serve out your sentence the usual way."

"And where exactly do you work, Ms. Cooper?" Christina asked.

Evan started to fuss just then, but Gwen kept her eyes on Christina's while she rocked her son. "It's extremely dangerous. There's a high probability you'll be killed or sustain disabling injury before your five years are up. The hours are long and irregular, the work is mentally and physically draining, and the security clearance required is so high that sometimes I doubt God himself knows what we're up to. Sometimes I think that's probably a good thing."

She studied Gwen's face, and realized she was dead serious about every word of it. "You know, you could stand to work on your recruitment pitch," she said uneasily.

Gwen smiled wearily. "It's also the most amazing and awe-inspiring job I've ever had, but I want you to know exactly what you're getting into before you agree. In the past three years, we've had nine employees, four of whom have died in the line of duty, occasionally more than once. Another has fled the planet, and yet another was a refugee from another century before he even signed up. We do necessary work, Christina, but it's not easy and it's certainly not safe."

But the hairs on Christina's neck had risen at the word _planet._ "What exactly is it that you do?" she asked. "And why do you need me?"

"We protect the Earth from hostile aliens," Gwen said simply. "Right now, there's one going about stealing people's minds. It looks like a rash of sudden, acute dementia cases, but it's an alien from another world that is leaving empty shells of people on the streets and we mean to stop it. And, as they say, you set a thief to catch a thief."

She rubbed her eyes, but no, Gwen Cooper was still there, bouncing an infant in her arms and talking about aliens. "Just for clarity," Christina said, "you're not with those UNIT chaps, are you?"

Gwen laughed softly. "Oh, not. They're far too well-behaved to be seen with us. And, before you ask, we don't work with the Doctor, either." Christina opened her mouth to ask about that, too, but Gwen didn't stop. "We are outside the government. We are not subject to the law. We're payed by Buckingham Palace, and I have used up the last of any influence I may have had over them for the next hundred years to make you this offer. Are you in?"

Christina looked at the chains around her wrists, the ugly orange jump suit, the bare concrete walls. Once she was convicted—a foregone conclusion at this point—it would take her years to plan an escape, not to mention setting up a hiding place where she could enjoy her freedom...and with her assets in limbo, it would mean starting over completely, unable to touch even her own name...

"You know," she said slowly, "you make the mortality rate sound almost like a challenge."

"It isn't," Gwen said solemnly. "This isn't a game, Lady Christina."

"No, but it's my kind of job," she said. "Just for reference, how much exactly do you pay?

_3\. of all the purple host_

"How many time do we have to kill you," Gwen asked, "before you stay dead?"

Apparently unconcerned about the ring of guns pointed at her head, Suzie Costello smiled. "I really don't know. Perhaps the third time's the charm?"

Lois was standing behind Gwen's back, so all she could see was the beam of her flashlight quiver. "You've already killed her twice?"

"Apparently she's a bit like Freddy Krueger," Andy said. "Or herpes."

"It wasn't my fault, this time," Suzie said, smile fading. "I didn't choose this. I need Torchwood's help."

"What makes you think you'll get it?" Gwen asked. "When you put so much effort into betraying us the last time?"

She raised her hands, showing the twisted scars that ran down her arms and disappeared into the sleeves of her dirty hospital smock. "Fine. I'm at your mercy, Gwen Cooper, so kill me again now if you like. I'm rather getting used to it. But I think you're at least curious about how I came to be here, or we wouldn't still be talking."

Gwen grit her teeth and let the barrel of her gun drop without taking her finger off the trigger. "So talk."

Suzie stood up, wobbling a bit; the bare lengths of her legs were just as scarred as her arms and face, and covered in bruises and mud down below the edges of her Wellies. "I escaped from a laboratory outside Bristol," she said. "They're experimenting with ways to raise the dead."

"How did they get hold of you?" Gwen asked. "The Hub was destroyed nearly two years ago. Your body should've been incinerated."

"How should I know?" Suzie asked. "I was dead at the time. The equipment in the lab was all UNIT branded—what sort of a cleaning service did Jack hire?"

Andy made uneasy eye contact with Gwen. UNIT had handled clean-up of the Hub site, and UNIT had reported nothing recoverable from the morgue, either alien or human. Gwen fixed her eyes back on Suzie. "How did you escape?"

"Holes in security," Suzie said. "Most of their test subjects need constant care—they're spastic, brain-damaged, deformed. I suppose they weren't subject to Torchwood's excellent cryogenic processes. I pretended to be catatonic when I realized what was going on, and when the orderlies had their backs turned I climbed out a window."

"And walked all the way to Cardiff?" Andy asked.

Suzie turned her dark eyes on him. "Compared to dying, it's relatively easy."

Lois made a small wibbling noise, and Gwen tried to keep the conversation on target. "Why would UNIT want to raise the dead?"

"I don't know," Suzie repeated. "They may not even be proper a UNIT operation—I never saw any red berets. But they're bringing back more every day, and they're getting better at it. I can lead you right to them, if you're willing to trust me."

"Trust you, right," Andy said. "You want us to believe that you just happened to be mixed up in this experiment, and you're conveniently the only one who's completely unharmed, and that you'd ask the people who killed you twice for help?"

"Actually, now that you mention it, none of the people who killed me are here," Suzie said. "But you did say the Hub is gone...and I never said I was the only one. Or that I'm unharmed."

Gwen looked carefully at the scars; they were gnarled and white, too deep not to cause her pain. "Did they do this to you? The people who brought you back?"

"I think so," Suzie said. It was the first time in their unorthodox acquaintance that Gwen had heard her sound so uncertain. "I...I've lost things. I'm different. I can't explain how." She looked piercingly at Gwen. "I know that's little consolation to my victims, but it's all I can offer."

Gwen was transfixed by that stare, but not Lois, who, being brilliant, piped up with another question. "And you said you're not the only one?"

"I'm not," Suzie confirmed. "There's another...I don't remember him having any connection to Torchwood, but he might've been after my time, so to speak. He hasn't bothered to hide his condition and he's got the staff eating out of his hand. He might be more dangerous than the people with the lighting rods."

"What do you know about him?" Gwen asked.

Suzie shrugged; it was a lopsided gesture. "Only that he calls himself Gray."

_4\. mine angry and defrauded young_

Jack was the first through the door, and when he stopped short the others bumped into him in a messy scrum. "Who the hell are you?" he asked.

Gwen pushed her way around Jack's wide shoulder in time to see a lanky young man stop the desk chair that had he'd evidently been spinning in. He scooted around to face them all. "I'm Luke," he said. "Luke Smith."

"And just how the hell did you get in here, Luke Smith?" Andy demanded, squeezing out past Jack's other side.

"I hacked into your security system," he said.

"That's impossible!" called Suzie, who was stuck in the back.

Luke Smith just shrugged. "Actually, it was pretty easy, once I realized you were using a Extarkanian randomization sequencer to control the encryption keys."

"You have an Extarkanian randomizer?" Suzie demanded shrilly, shouldering between Jack and Christina.

"No," Luke said, "but I know the generation algorithm, so once I got the first character I was able to extrapolate the rest pretty easily."

They had all made it into the room, now. Luke just looked at them passively, waiting for one of them to challenge his claim to have just done something impossible. "You're Sarah Jane Smith's son, aren't you?" Gwen asked, trying to fit the pieces together.

Luke's dark eyebrows lowered. "I was," he said.

"What happened?" Jack asked.

"She's dead."

The words took a minute to sink in, but a minute was all Gwen could give them. "Andy, would you and Jack come with me, please? Lois, check the police band to make certain we didn't leave anything behind, and then go help Christina unload the SUV. Suzie, I think you've got some research to do?"

They took the hint, though Suzie gave Luke a long, speculating look as she dragged her loot into the temporary archives. Gwen tried to lead Luke into her office, but he twitched his shoulder away when she touched him. "Do you want to have this conversation in private?" she asked.

"Here's fine," he said, leaning back in the office chair.

"Let's rephrase it, then," Andy said. "I think we'd all like to have a talk in private, and that means you're outvoted." He grabbed the chair by the neck rest and started pushing it between cubicles; Luke jumped out and glared at him. "Oh, you can sit down, I don't mind pushing."

Gwen didn't particularly like the flimsy walls of her office, but until they finished repairs on the Hub this location was the best they could do—cheap, discreet and secure. Luke took the guest chair, and Jack stood against the wall, leaving Andy to perch on the corner of the desk that Gwen kept clear just for that purpose. "What happened, Luke?" Gwen asked, thinking that there had been no reports of fire or explosions in Ealing.

"She died," Luke said again, and he was still quite calm about it; at least, he seemed calm, but he wasn't making eye contact much and his hands were restless, fingers fluttering over an invisible keyboard. "It was aliens called the Bane. They came for me and Sarah Jane died."

"What do these Bane things want with you?" Jack asked quietly.

"I'm an Archetype," Luke said. "They created me in a lab and they've been after me ever since. This time they wanted to turn my brain into a supercomputer."

"Sounds like they wouldn't have far to go," Andy muttered.

Gwen rubbed her eyes. "Luke, first of all, I'm terribly sorry for your loss," she said. "But I still don't understand why you're here. Are the Bane still after you?"

"No," Luke said. "I killed them all."

There was a moment of heavy silence; Jack shifted slightly, as if he wanted to get withing grabbing distance of Luke but knew he couldn't do it subtly. "As in, you killed the ones who were after you, or...?" he asked.

"Our computer had a transmission range that covered most of the solar system," Luke said, looking down at his hands. "I managed to bounce the signal off a passing fusion barge to get it a bit further. A bioresonance frequency, sort of like how Torchwood defeated the 456."

"The 456 were a threat to the entire human species," Gwen said, trying to associate the thin boy—and he was a boy, still, really—with that kind of destruction.

"So are the Bane," Luke said, raising his chin suddenly. "They're a threat to Earth, and Sarah Jane wouldn't use guns or bombs against them and it got her killed. So I thought I'd try things your way for a little bit."

He fixed his dark eyes on Gwen, penetrating eyes under bushy brows. He looked tired, and she noticed for the first time that one of his knuckles was split and scabbed over. His fingers were still moving. "Luke," Gwen said slowly, "are you asking me for a job?"

"I'm an Archetype," he said again. "You can use me."

Andy snorted. "How old are you, kid?"

"Three." Luke looked around when both Jack and Andy make choked noises, then rolled his eyes. "My physiological age is seventeen, which is what's important."

"Too young to drink, vote or die for your country," Jack said darkly.

"I've had on-the-job training," Luke said. "I backed up some of Mr. Smith's records before he shattered, I can show you."

"We have a pretty good idea what you and your mum were up to, actually," Gwen said. "Luke, do you have any idea what you're asking?"

"Torchwood fights aliens," Luke said. "So do I. So did Sarah Jane. Aliens made me, an alien educated me, aliens took away everything I have."

"Surely you've got other family," Andy said. "Or friends, or something?"

"They're safer without me," Luke said, but he didn't sound sure of that. "But you lot are professionals. You know what you're doing. We can help each other."

Jack took a step forward and loomed over Luke. "Hold it right there, kid. Torchwood is not in the revenge business."

Luke jumped to his feet; the crest of one cowlick might've grazed Jack's chin. "If the Bane come back to Earth--"

"If the Bane come back," Gwen said sharply; Andy and Jack were both crowding the boy now, looming over him, but she stayed seated on purpose, "or if any other alien threatens the safety of Earth, you will have to take your orders from me, Luke. Every time we go into the field, we have to balance a lot of competing interests, and our own feelings and prejudices cannot get in the way of that. We're Torchwood, not a pack of ravenous dogs, no matter what your mother might've thought about our methods. We do what has to be done, and sometimes it is terrible, but it is always with an eye to the common good."

She moderated her tone of voice a little as she continued, "Think very hard, Luke. If you join Torchwood, there may come a day when you have to gun down someone innocent. Or more likely, a day when you have to look some monster in the eye—maybe even a Bane—and extend it a helping hand. This is the century when human history pivots on its axis, and Torchwood doesn't have the luxury of ideological purity. Sarah Jane did. So I want you to go home for now—or wherever it is you're staying—and ask yourself if you can honestly put your own feeling aside and do a formal duty to the human race. Because Jack is right: we don't do revenge here. We don't take political sides. And we are not hobbyists. If you really think you can handle it, we'll talk again in a few days. If not, then I promise we'll help you in any other way we can."

Luke stared at his shoes and squirmed a little. Andy and Jack had backed off during the speech, but were still close enough to grab him if he lashed out. If anything, though, Luke seemed to shrink. "I don't...I just got to Cardiff this morning," he eventually muttered.

"I can drop you off at a hostel in town," Andy offered. "The showers cost extra but the sheets are clean."

As they left—Andy herding Luke with his body language, without actually trying to touch him again—Jack said in a low voice, "Tell me you're not serious about this."

"Your namesake would've been," Gwen replied. "Luke is a brilliant and willing. He could contribute a lot."

"You're talking about putting a impressionable kid in an enclosed space with Suzie," Jack pointed out.

Gwen shrugged. "Lois has held up all right." Jack justed started at her with a certain tilt of his head. "Look, right now, it sounds like what Luke needs is friends. For whatever reason, he's picked us. I know Sarah Jane is probably rolling over in her grave..." She paused. "Assuming she has one, that is. But my point is, we can't just turn him away, regardless of whether we entertain hiring him."

"What about your contacts in UNIT?" Jack asked. "Surely somebody there could use a research assistant?"

"Sarah Jane always worried that UNIT would exploit him," Gwen said. "That's one of the reasons she kept him away from us, too, actually."

Jack sighed. "Which is why we're sitting here, planning to exploit him."

"I'm not sure it's exploitation if he's offered." She rubbed her eyes and opened up her laptop. "Send the others home for me, will you? It doesn't seem like I'll be getting any sleep tonight, but that doesn't mean you all have to be deprived."

"Don't forget to call home," Jack said over his shoulder as he left. "Almost bedtime."

"Yeah," Gwen said, and looked at the picture of Rhys and Evan on her desk, while someone else's extraordinary son rode in Andy's car, drumming his fingers to a frantic, silent beat.

_5\. to fly before he thinked_

He thought he'd run far and fast enough to lose himself, so the woman who dropped into the chair across from him and said "Adam Mitchell?" almost made him drop his beer.

_"Que?"_ he asked, but he'd never been much of a liar, especially not after a few pints. His voice cracked.

The woman smiled at him, revealing a gap in her teeth, and she spoke in English, not Spanish. "Adam Mitchell, born February 26th, 1991? Given a suspended sentence for infiltrating the US Department of Defense's servers in 1999, briefly attended the Rattigan Academy, finished your degree at MIT in less than three years, employed by the Geocomtex corporation until...let me think...early this year? When you quite suddenly went missing? Only to magically turn up at your mother's house in Manchester, or so she maintains, despite the best efforts of her psychiatrist..."

Adam's stomach rolled. "What do you want from me?" he hissed.

She learned closer. "Specifically, you reappeared the day before your official disappearance in what has been classified as a chemical spill by the Utah Department of Natural Resources, but which the Unified Intelligence Task Force suspects to have been an attack by a hostile extraterrestrial known as a Dalek. Except the evidence was covered up, your former boss turned up raving on the streets of Syracuse, and after scaring the life out of your poor mother you went on the run, using a crudely faked passport and a wad of cash stolen from her kitchen cupboard."

Adam stood up. "I'm leaving now."

"No, you're not," the woman said.

"You think you can stop me?"

She smiled again. "With a snap of my fingers."

Adam sat down again. It was getting hard to breathe.

"My name is Gwen," she continued, as if she didn't notice or didn't care about his discomfort. "I'm not with the police, so don't worry, you're not in any trouble. But ever since a friend of mine tipped me off to the incident in Utah, I've been looking for you, Adam. I just didn't expect to have to travel halfway around the world to find you."

"What do you want with me?" he asked, and tugged down on the bandanna that covered his forehead. The jack couldn't open if it was obstructed, he'd found, but if this woman knew about it--

"I want to help you," she said. "And I think you can help me in return."

"What do you mean?"

Now she leaned back, apparently unconcerned about being overheard. "I work with alien technology, Adam, something I'm given to understand you have some experience with. I could use someone with your skills on my team."

"How does that help me?" he asked.

"Working with alien technology means we have quite a lot of it," she said. "I'll admit I don't know what all of it does, but there's a chance that some of it could help you cope with your...head injury. Perhaps even make it useful for you, instead of a liability. You'd be given free rein—within reason—to experiment with that technology. And I give you my solemn word that you would not be subjected to any research against your will, not by me, nor my team, nor anyone else on this planet."

"How can I trust you?" he asked, leaning forward over the sticky table so he could drop his voice. "I've got a widget from two hundred thousand years in the future embedded in my skull, how you not want to experiment on it?"

"I want you, Adam Mitchell, the brilliant young man, more than I want the secrets of that technology," she said firmly. "And it seems to me that the best trade for your services is our protection."

He stared at her, this petite woman with big promises who hadn't even given her full name. "How can you offer that?" he asked. "I mean, I've literally got a target on my forehead!"

"I'm with Torchwood," she said confidently. "You'd be surprised what we can do."

_6\. a thing so very bad_

A man stood in the shadows. He had walked the location during the day, observing the level concrete and the new door; of course the damage had been repaired, because you don't leave gaping holes in major landmarks, but there was no telling what he'd find underneath—inside. It had been almost three years, after all. Loads of time, and not enough time at all.

He quickly walked along the edge of the bay, and CCTV cameras failed in his wake, only to return to life once he had passed them by. The door was steel-cored and had a battered sign on the front declaring it "closed for repairs" with a cheery declaration that it would reopen three months ago. The lock was easy to break, and the space inside was bare drywall and devoid of furniture: good. He wasn't sure he could've handled seeing a tidy desk and a beaded curtain, not even after all this time. Clearly someone had been doing work, but if he was lucky, they hadn't worked fast enough. The hidden doorway was no longer hidden, and the dull steel reflected the lights of his keytool as he coaxed open all the locks with an old passcode they should never have been programmed to remember.

The gates along the tunnel were different to what he remembered, but they, too, feel to the same patient persuasion. It wasn't quite a sonic screwdriver, but it would do.

He was surprised to pass through the final door and find light: the soft, irregular light of a rift manipulator, chugging away with a familiar rhythm. It couldn't possibly have survived the explosion; this one had to be new. Who could've built a new one, though? Sure, the plans were on the server, but the amount of money—not to mention the labor—he gave in to the temptation to cross the room, stepping over trailing extension cords and crunching heedlessly on the stray nails and piles of sawdust. He kicked aside a paint can and reached out to put one flat palm on the side of the manipulator, to feel the pulse of the Rift itself, an old familiar friend.

The lights suddenly snapped on, and he heard the familiar sound of a hammer cocking. "Put your hands behind your head and step away from the device," said a voice that was also familiar, though not quite familiar enough to place.

Other people boiled out of nooks and crannies at the same moment, all armed—there was a dark-haired young man with a cap on holding an honest-to-god Kalashnikov like he knew what he was doing and a dark-haired woman with a sniper rifle trained on his head. Off to one side, a second woman, familiar in a vague sort of way; a terrifyingly thin boy with a Kerillite stunner; and at least two people behind him, from the sound of things. God, had this been an ambush? How could this have been an ambush? "It's all right," he said in his best trust-me voice, the voice that had gotten people killed in the past. "I'm not armed," he added, in case they'd believe him.

"Hands on your head, and step away from the device," the same voice repeated.

He slowly did as he was told, making no move to turn around at the moment; instead he repeated, "It's all right," and added, "I work here, actually."

"That's lovely. Don't move."

He remained still while brisk hands frisked him, removing his wrist strap and his keytool and three of his weapons. The familiar woman, who was black, juggled her gun into one hand and waved a scanner at him. "He's still carrying at least three devices," she declared in a London accent.

"Five, actually," he said. "And if you're going to go looking for them, I demand dinner and a movie first."

The original speaker snorted behind him. "Right. I'm sure a rubber glove and a bottle of baby oil will be adequate."

"I'm offended and disturbed," he said. "I demand to speak to whoever's in charge here so I can file a formal complaint."

"That'd be me."

He turned—for a moment he was heedless of the danger and he turned around, looking past the unfinished walls and exposed wires to a balcony with a precarious rail of two-by-fours and plywood scraps. And the woman standing on it, the woman in a short leather jacket and a pinstriped blouse, the woman smiling at him without looking the least bit amused--

"Gwen?" he blurted.

"That's Ms. Cooper to you, now," she said, and descended the short, steep stairs that were not what had been here before. "This is my Hub, now. These are my team. And you happen to be an alien trespasser."

He blinked at her, stupidly, before his eyes fell on the two—no, three--people who'd been standing behind him. It was Gwen's old copper friend Andy What's-his-name and--and-- "You've got to be kidding me," he blurted.

"Nice to see you too, James," said Harkness.

"Long time, no see?" Susie added, without lowering her weapon.

He looked helplessly at Gwen, but she wasn't smiling anymore. Nobody was. "At least tell me he was joking about the baby oil?" Jack asked weakly.

Gwen ignored the question. "Strip-search him if you have to, and then take him down to the lockup. I'll be with him presently." Then she looked Jack dead in the eye. "You deserted your post, Captain. You can't have thought you could just waltz right back in?"

"Well, I'll admit I was hoping for a warmer welcome home," he said. But as he looked around, at the strange faces and almost-familiar ones—at Harkness, who was wearing modern clothes and carrying a modern pistol, at Suzie's gloves and scarf and stun gun. At the unpainted drywall and exposed wiring and bare boards, with no lift, no murals, no Water Tower and certainly no pterodon. He looked around and realized--

"This isn't your home, Jack," Gwen said crisply, finally, as her people began to put him in chains. "Not anymore."


End file.
